UNDERATED for LEGO Ideas: March 2016

Welcome to this month’s episode of UNDERATED for LEGO Ideas, exclusively on the site they love to hate: SilentMode.tv. (I say that out of exaggeration, whether or not it’s true.)

Some people have appreciated my efforts to promote their projects, others shrug it off as nothing, and some have even tried to belittle it in various ways. Whatever opinion you personally have of UNDERATED, its sole purpose is to help those projects reach 10,000 supporters. I remember how difficult it was to gain even 100 for my projects when they were up, so that one person giving a shout out – no matter how small their reach – is far more valuable than the thousands who sit there and do nothing. That’s my humble opinion.

Speaking of shouting out, this month I have three projects on my list. Here they are, in no particular order…

It’s been just over a year (I think?) since The LEGO Movie was in the cinema and brought LEGO firmly into the mainstream. I’m not sure if it still holds the same appeal, but this project is a welcome addition to the official sets, and one I would have actually picked up in the shops.

Although the air balloon is directly from the Friends set that came out last year, the rest of the airship has been built around it. Emphasis on built: the most impressive thing about this entry is that it has actually been built out of real parts, complete with Unikitty.

Right now this contraption has 17 supporters behind it, when there should probably be 9,983 other people riding on it.

Here’s another gardening related project that made the UNDERATED cut. Unlike the previous recommendation, which I hope most of you have gone and given your support to, this one is a single vignette – and it looks good!

You could find room in your town or country layout for this vignette, and there’s plenty of room for customisation: you could install a lawn using Green tiles, or add your own varieties of crops. (You do know how to customise, don’t you?)

As things stand right now, this project has 139 supporters after just under a week. Whether or not it’s part of an overall trend, I can see this one doing really well.

Hot off the press is this project from none other than Tim Goddard: one half of the duo behind LEGO Space: Building the Future. But that’s not why it made the list.

We’ve had one Ideas set based around brick-built animals (with the LEGO Birds Project), but this one introduces minifigure scale ones. There’s something about the elephants that just makes the idea work: perhaps it’s that – as mentioned in the project – elephants are prohibitively expensive on the grey market. In any case, the safari setting, complete with nosy photogenic TV personality, make this a winning combination.

No doubt helped by the celebrity behind the project, we have 89 supporters… and counting.

That is literally it for this month’s UNDERATED. I have to make an effort to make this a regularly scheduled feature if this is going to work, but thank you for joining me. As usual, we’re going to do it all again next month.